In this second part I talk about the various functions, what they do and how they fit together. First, it isn’t perfect, there are bits missing, some of the terms used may seem strange to today’s geekerati, parts are positively rough and there is plenty of competition. But, there’s more than enough to keep many people happy and get them started with collaborative computing. It’s important to remember that innovation doesn’t necessarily mean the user has to be presented with the latest set of whizzy services. It can mean a re-thinking of established ways of working. That is what BT has done and, broadly succeeded.
Sign up is a doddle (name, email, business name, assign password – done.) You don’t need a pre-existing BT account, you can opt for the Lite, free version (which I’ve done) which means that it is open to anyone from around the world.
Set up is just as easy: Name a workspace which you can envisage as a project and invite people along using Plaxo’s Universal Address Book which supports a variety of address book types. I have 879 contacts in my Gmail account and at first I made the mistake of importing the lot. BT Workspace only gives me the option of inviting people as contributors who get to edit, collaborate and invite others or observers who can only view content. There is an option to delete addressees but I would have preferred an option to put contacts on hold for future projects. Importing around 20 contacts took less than 20 seconds.
This left me with a dilemma. I want to test this thing but don’t want folk to think they’re being spammed. If you do feel that’s happened then I’ll take that as a lesson for the future. I created an invitation email where I did my best to explain the bones of the idea. Once sent, the system creates a private project workspace, It’s what BT classes as an extranet. For which read secure and private but with no RSS. NOt perfect but good enough for SMBs to feel comfortable. BTW – on the spam front, I remember having problems with Goowy.
Group discussions. Once the invitations were sent then I could start creating group discussions, schedule a meeting or event, share files and assign tasks. Since my ‘guinea pig group’ was unaware of what was going on, I restricted myself to a single group discussion topic. As it happens, I didn’t bother to post the topic because I was faced with a non-WYSIWYG screen inviting me to add HTML. What idiot designed this? SMBs may be smart but it’s a stretch to expect the non-geek crowd to understand much about HTML coding. In the short term I don’t think it matters that much because if you’re a plain text email user then you’ll be used to overcoming the restrictions by doing things like *emphasising* important points in other ways then emboldening text. Even so, in 2007, it falls short and denies people the chance for a rich interface. If I had
posted the topic then my contact group would have been notified by email about the creation of the discussion. Group members can reply and create new topics of conversation. So can GoogleGroups which provides plenty more options – like the number of daily updates. You can also ‘consume’ GoogleGroup material as web pages or through email.
Whether you consider BT Workspace discussions as a bastardised form of blog/forum or a poor competitor to GoogleGroups is moot. It sort of falls in line with Rod Boothby’s concept of ‘worksites’ but doesn’t include many of the blog components you might need. At this stage, I can understand why BT would eschew blogs given that it is attempting to reach people who may have no concept of blogging. Contrary to what social computing buffs may say, the vast majority of people may have heard of blogs but have little idea what they can do for business. Taking this approach provides a gentle way to ease people into social computing without overwhelming them.
File sharing is easy – find and upload. You can upload multiple files. The problem is that the available space for the Lite version is a miserly 10MB. For the paid version, the limit is 200MB with an extra 1GB costing an additional £5/month. 200MB may seem a lot but when you think that a couple of audio files can soak up 20MB alone and video? Ferget it. Ismael Ghalimi has a comprehensive list of services that offer cheap/free file storage. I’ve played with Box.net which gives you 1GB – for free.
Events/meetings are similar to those found in Google Calendar. You set up an event, decide if you want others to join by sending an email. You don’t get to choose which members get to be invited – if they’re in your workspace, they get the email. I’m not sure about this. It’s perfectly reasonable to let everyone know and mention who’s needed on the call but that’s clumsy.
Tasks/task lists are a nice addition. You can create task lists and assign tasks within those to project members. Enough said.
That pretty much takes care of the project management side of things. It’s not as comprehensive as Backpack but then it is trying to be a broader offering. As a first stab at using the principles of social computing to getting things done, it’s a credible if messy first step.
Company workspace is described as an ‘intranet.’ Like the ‘extranet’ it includes discussions, calendar and documents but it also includes a bulletin board which does exactly what you’d expect – allows you to post the equivalent of electronic notices, announcements and so on. It could be used for policies but that’s a bit of a stretch unless you need to publicise these and they’re fully formed.
Customer information is where the interesting stuff is held. Since this is a VSB/SMB offering I’m not going to compare it with Salesforce.com. It’s nowhere near as sophisticated. Creating customer accounts is dismal, being single entry only if you go that route. No integration here to Outlook or any other mail system for that matter. There is the option to import contacts in exactly the same way as when setting up projects.The best way to set up an account therefore is to provide the basic company information in Accounts, then import contacts and assign those contact to the company accounts by editing personal details. As a VSB it’s not an issue. As an SMB with say 100 customers, it will take some work. With 879 contacts – as I have in Gmail – it’s a goodly amount of work.
The upside is that once I’ve got past this pain point, I can then go on to create customer related tasks, moderately detailed sales opportunities, journal notes and contract information that can include attachments such as you’d need for contract situations.
It’s simple, basic but not crude. It does just enough for the first time user of sales management tools without overwhelming the user with detail and cruff. The interfaces are consistent if unimaginative. Grey everywhere is not my idea of welcoming.
My Workspace is the equivalent of having a wholly private space where I can drop tasks, add calendar items and store my own documents. It’s nicely integrated to the other major components and should be regarded as the user’s first port of call.
ENDNOTE: Thanks to David Tebbutt for providing ‘middle of the night’ feedback and Sam Sethi for providing the Google Alert link.
Technorati Tags: broadband, BT Workplace, CRM, RSS, SaaS, SME
